Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)

The largest and most sensitive telescope in the world at
millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. A joint United States-European
project, ALMA consists of sixty-six 12-meter and 7-meter dish antennas at
an altitude of 5,000 m near Cerro Chajnantor in northern Chile. The array
is configurable with baselines up to 10 km, is capable of imaging in all
atmospheric windows between 10 mm and 350 microns, and has 10 times the
resolution of the Very Large Array (VLA) and
the Hubble Space Telescope. The US side of the
project is run by the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO), while the European side is a collaboration between
the European Southern Observatory, the French
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, the German Max-Planck-Gesellschaft,
the Netherlands Foundation for Research in Astronomy and Nederlandse Onderzoekschool
Voor Astronomie, and the United Kingdom Particle Physics and Astronomy Research
Council.

In June 2002, work began to assemble the first of the ALMA prototype antennas
at the ALMA Test Facility located on the VLA site in New Mexico. Among ALMA's
numerous uses will be the observation of star-forming regions, protostars,
and protoplanetary disks. ALMA will
also play an important role in the search for extrasolar
planets through accurate astrometry, and
possibly even the direct detection of planets and their atmospheres. ALMA
was inaugereted on March 13, 2013, and has now begun operation.